


A Handful of Poppy Seeds

by Quinntessentially



Category: Polygon/McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: Empaths (kind of), First Kiss, M/M, Tenderness, give it a whirl, this is id fic but it's wholesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 14:29:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23045926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quinntessentially/pseuds/Quinntessentially
Summary: Pat remembers the way the moonlight had made Brian seem almost unearthly.Pat remembers the urge to kiss Brian, then the confusion about where that feeling came from, then the gentle, dry feeling of Brian’s lips pressed against his.He’d pushed Brian away, then.If Brian kissed him again, now, though? Pat thinks he wouldn’t say no.
Relationships: Brian David Gilbert/Patrick Gill
Comments: 8
Kudos: 45





	A Handful of Poppy Seeds

**Author's Note:**

> I love this fandom so much, and apparently I wrote a fic for it instead of lurking. About time, tbh.

The night’s cool, but there’s potential in the air. Pat’s walking home, and he can feel the air steal the flush from his cheeks.

Unraveled had just wrapped, and post-shoot drinks with the video team are something of a tradition. So yeah, Pat’s had a few, but the air’s doing wonders to sober him. Normally Pat’s a mopey drunk, but today… maybe it’s Brian rubbing off on him.

Brian, today, had been _glowing_. Pat’s not certain he saw him stop moving the entire time they were out, always a pixie-sharp grin on his face, always in two conversations at once.

Yeah, maybe Brian’s mania was a little contagious, because Pat can feel himself grin quietly just thinking about it. He unlocks the door to his apartment building, and frowns at the broken elevator.

They left the bar at an eminently reasonable hour, because they have work in the morning, and Pat’s energy from the night is draining away from him. He brushes his teeth, runs a comb through his hair, falls into bed.

As he falls into sleep, his mind drifts to Brian, about how he seemed just as bright as the stars. How for just a few seconds, Pat did too.

> - < - > - < - > - <

He wakes up… early? Yeah, early. The sun’s streaming through his window— honestly, who decided to have his bedroom window face due east— but it’s got that rosy-fingered edge to it that means dawn’s in the process of breaking.

Pat pulls himself out of bed, and his lips pull themselves into a smile. It’s not freezing in his apartment even though it’s November, and he doesn’t have a trace of a hangover. It feels like today’s gonna be a good one. 

The universe, of course, seems out to prove him wrong. He’s out of decent cereal, so he ate a delicious bowl o’ stale Cheerios for breakfast. He bruises his knee on the front doorframe. The walk to the subway is vaguely unpleasant and smells strongly of cigarettes, and the subway itself is worse.

As soon as he gets halfway down the stairs, he can see a… mob? outside one of the train cars. Pat walks a little closer, morbidly curious, and sees a police officer attempting to control the crowd.

His chances of getting to work on time for once are starting to look poor. He calls Tara.

Her phone rings for long enough that he thinks she’s not going to pick up, but— 

“Hey Pat. What’s going on?” Tara doesn’t sound annoyed, yet.

“Something’s going on at my subway station. I don’t think I’m going to make it in on time today.”

“Do you have anything that needs to be rescheduled this morning?” You can always trust Tara to focus on what needs to happen. Pat appreciates that she believes him, no questions asked. Subway troubles are a pretty vague excuse.

“I’m supposed to be pitching a couple video ideas at the ten o’clock meeting today. I’ll email you my notes on them. Otherwise… nothing until two, and with any luck I’ll be in by then.”

“Sounds good. Let me know if anything else comes up.” Pat’s just as ready to be done with this conversation as Tara is. One of the lights in the ceiling is flickering, and the piss smell in the station is giving him the headache he dodged earlier. 

The train mob still hasn’t dispersed, but the police officer looks to be making some headway. Pat looks at the mob, considers wading through it to see what happened, considers how he doesn’t really want to be late to work.

He sighs, heads towards the escalator up. He can’t really afford a Lyft, but the next nearest station that stops anywhere near the Polygon offices is ten blocks away. His hip’s going to start complaining if he has to walk too far, and then Pat’s going to feel even more like an old man than usual.

He sighs again. He seems to be doing that a lot lately. Pat fishes out his phone and emails Tara, then calls a Lyft.

> - < - > - < - > - <

It’s ten on the dot when Pat rolls up and clambers out of the car. He nods cordially to the driver, and she nods back before driving off.

He shoulders his bag a little more and frowns as his stomach grumbles. Apparently Cheerios don’t have a lot of staying power. 

When he walks into the office, it seems emptier than usual, and then he remembers the meeting he’s missing.

The conference room door squeaks when he opens it, and Pat sits down in his usual chair. 

Jenna makes meaningful eye contact with him, and he knows that he’ll have some explaining to do after the meeting. But for now, he leans back in his chair and tunes into what Tara’s explaining— something about… Gill and Gilbert?

Tara continues, “We’re thinking about a weekly streaming schedule again, but of course I’d like to hear from Brian and Pat first.”

Brian opens his mouth and pauses, makes eye contact with Pat, and he can see the question in Brian’s eyes.

Pat breaks the stretching quiet, “Yeah, that sounds good. The Polygon Twitch channel’s been quiet for too long.”

Brian chimes in, “And it’s not like people aren’t clamoring for it to return. Let’s do this thing!” 

Tara nods decisively and the meeting moves on to other things. 

Brian leans towards Pat and whispers, “It’ll be nice to spend some time together again.” Pat can hear the smile in his voice, remembers a couple nights where they ended up crashing on the couch after the stream ended until they had the energy and inclination to get home.

Brian was always keyed-up after the cameras turned off, and Pat was always hit by the exhaustion he hadn’t noticed while they were streaming, so Pat napped while Brian played something soothing until both of them had levelled off.

Once, just once, Brian had fallen asleep too, and Pat had opened his eyes to a dark, silent office—someone must have turned the lights off—and Brian breathing next to him. 

Pat remembers Brian’s sleeping form, the way just looking at him had taken all of Pat’s post-stream insomnia and replaced it with peace. He remembers the way the moonlight had made him seem almost unearthly, shined on his eyes when he cracked one open to see Pat looming and made his pupils appear almost luminous.

Pat remembers the urge to kiss Brian, then the confusion about where that feeling came from, then the gentle, dry feeling of Brian’s lips pressed against his.

He’d pushed Brian away, then. Brian had a girlfriend and Pat had a boatload of commitment issues, and… whatever it was would have melted away in the morning light.

If Brian kissed him again, now, though? Pat thinks he wouldn’t say no.

Pat tunes back into the meeting, realizes he’s missed half of Clayton’s pitches. Whoops.

He manages to stay focused during the rest of the meeting, and he’s pretty sure Tara’s not pissed at him at all once he throws out a couple ideas for solo videos that people seem receptive to.

Brian stays looking at him throughout the meeting, and Pat restrains himself from glancing back more than a few times. He’ll ask him to get a coworkerly lunch after the meeting, because they clearly have something to talk about. 

> - < - > - < - > - <

He’ll… ask Brian to lunch in a few hours, because it turns out that showing up late is not a great way to clear your email and video-editing backlog. The next time Pat checks Slack, he sees that Brian’s beaten him to the punch.

_ > hey pat! want to get some lunch today & discuss gill&gilbert ideas? _  
_ > the green light was p sudden so i figure we should hash some things out first_  
_ > there’s a new ramen shop that i’ve been meaning to check out _

Pat messages back a “_sounds good_” and returns his nose to the grindstone. One o’clock creeps up before he notices it, and Brian’s tapping him on the shoulder to get going. Pat takes off his headphones, unfolds—aw fuck, he had forgotten about the knee—and accompanies Brian to the elevators.

The walk to the ramen shop is just as filled with banter as always, but when they finally get there, a line stretches out the door.

Brian starts to apologize, but Pat cuts him off. “There’s a decent sandwich shop just down the block. At this point I kind of just want to sit down.”

The sandwich shop is decent, bordering on mediocre, but’s it’s warm and has empty tables. Brian starts fidgeting as he and Pat order at the counter, and Pat starts feeling a little antsy as well.

They get their food and sit down.

Brian looks even tenser, and then he blurts out, “I have something to tell you. Big something. Is that cool right now or should I tell you later?”

Pat’s… usually down for anything with Brian, so, “Yeah, hit me.”

“If we’re going to start up Gill and Gilbert again, you should— well, you probably— I— I’m like a… reverse empath? Like I sometimes project my emotions on to other people? On accident. And I think I’ve been doing it to you.”

There’s a pause.

Pat opens his mouth and all that comes out is a puff of air. Brian winces.

Pat gets the feeling he should say something. Or maybe Brian’s projecting _his_ feeling that he should say something. Fuck.

The silence is stretching, the moment’s getting tenser, Pat can feel questions bubble in his gut.

He’s about to say something stupid like, “so is the fact that I want to kiss you mutual then, or..?” but the waiter shows up with their food and the moment is broken.

Pat takes a bite of his sandwich and lets his thoughts order themselves for a second. Swallows. “So have you been a… reverse-empath since you were born? Or is it something that happened to you?”

Brian looks relieved, and now that he’s paying attention to it, Pat can feel the gentle wave of relief that passes over him too. “I think it’s been happening since I was born? But, like, who knows. It’s definitely been a thing since I was a kid, though.”

Pat nods, considers. “Can you tell when you’re doing it?”

Brian tilts his head from side to side. “I can kind of tell when it’s happening, but I can’t control it.” He opens his mouth to say something when his phone vibrates. He checks it and, yup, Pat can feel a pinch of guilt-annoyance hit him. “Sorry Pat, we should probably go. Jenna’s messaging me”—and oh yeah, he owes Jenna an explanation too—“about some script changes for her dating-sim video.”

The cold air smacks him in the face after the overheated café, and next to him, Brian’s looking similarly affronted. “Hey, Brian?” He glances over. “You know we’re cool, right?”

The smile that breaks over Brian’s face is like the sunrise, and Pat’s pretty certain that the sudden impulse to kiss him didn’t come from his weird empathy-thing.

> - < - > - < - > - <

Back at the office, Brian and Jenna scarper off, and Pat’s left to cool off from whatever it was that just happened. He’s not sure why Brian’s so worried— he had been having some pretty strong emotions during that conversation, and Pat hadn’t really been affected at all.

Well, anxiety’ll do ya like that sometimes.

Pat hunkers down to work, but he looks up when Brian comes back maybe an hour later. They end up together in the break room, and, while Brian is pouring himself a cup of coffee, he opens his mouth to ask Brian about some actual Gill and Gilbert ideas.

When Brian turns around, what comes out of his mouth is, “I don’t actually think your empathy thing is that strong.”

Brian laughs. “No, I’m pretty sure it is.”

“Why?”

The sound of Brian sipping his cup of coffee comes in lieu of a response.

Pat grimaces at him. “No, really. I’m pretty sure it’s not— I can tell when my emotions aren’t my own.”

Brian says, “Well then why—” and he stops, flushes red. “I just _know_, okay? Okay?” The break room seems to get a little more stifling.

“I just… want you to know when I do this next thing that my feelings are my own.” Pat runs a hand through his hair, steps forward. Holds Brian’s face in his hands.

Leans in and asks, “Can I kiss you?”

The moment holds still, fragile as glass, and Pat feels Brian press in to the kiss.

They break apart after a second, but Pat can feel himself grinning, and he can feel a little swell of happiness in his stomach from Brian. 

Simone comes in to the break room bold as brass, and Pat can see the moment she realizes she’s interrupted something. She makes a “sorry!” face, but Pat waves her on.

“Brian, I’ll… I’ll message you. Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He’s smiling, yes, and happiness is glowing out of his pores. “That sounds great.”

> - < - > - < - > - <

Time passes, because of course it does. They start up Gill and Gilbert, and everything’s mostly the same except now, when the cameras stop rolling, Brian will usually press a kiss to Pat’s cheek.

Brian comes out with a tweet, and Pat comes out with a tweet two hours later.

They still don’t really understand Brian’s _thing_, but they’re making it work. They’re making it work.

Pat asks Brian, one day, about that time in the break room. They’re on Pat’s couch, TV providing a nice sonic blanket, and Brian grins and looks up at Pat when he asks.

“I was so convinced I had to be influencing your emotions because I had wanted to kiss you for ages, and I was so convinced that you would never want to kiss me back.”

Pat pulls Brian slightly closer to him. “Well, I’m glad we figured it out. Coupla dumbasses, the both of us.”

And Brian presses slightly closer in to Pat, warm and content, and the TV plays on.

**Author's Note:**

> Please drop a kudos if you enjoyed!


End file.
